The Engineer/Manager pendulum (2017)

charity.wtf

19 pointsfalcor842 comments

Engineering Manager (or Director/VP) is about building a "machine that builds product". Engineer (or Architect/CTO) is about "building the product". Switching between the two as described in the article is perfectly OK and a good career path - but if you really want to be good at one you'll have to give up the other. Management (or building the machine that builds the product) is a skill that requires a lot of experimentation, studying, mistakes - just like any new programming language or stack. If you want to become good at it, you'll need to focus on it full-time for several years.

You would think you could become good at eng. mgmt., but reality says otherwise.

Most of the VP Eng's I've met are washed-up ex-engineers with no mgmt. ability either. They're just cogs in a machine or the apex of an org chart.

And why do we expect them to be good at something they never studied? Like doctors, they can bury their mistakes (ie. fire malcontents.)

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